I Want Things To Change - But They Aren’t

Let me ask you two questions right out of the gate. How good are you at waiting?

I’m terrible. Genuinely, embarrassingly bad at it.

Okay, second question. How good are you at consistency, at staying at something over the long haul, even when nothing seems to be changing?

Now that I’m good at. And before you think I’m bragging, let me stop you right there. For me, that’s not a compliment. That’s a confession. Because the same stubbornness that kept me consistent also kept me grinding, kept me believing I could work my way out of any mess I created. I grew up thinking, “I can fix this. I can talk my way through this. I can sell my way to a better version of myself.”

And my mouth? Oh, it got me into trouble more times than I can count. I said “I’m sorry” so often it started to lose its meaning, even to me.

So here’s the real question underneath all of that. The soul-searching one.

How are you at faith?

The book of Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 1, puts it this way in the New Century Version: “Faith means being sure of the things we hope for and knowing that something is real even if we do not see it.” (Hebrews 11:1 NCV)

For me, the word that causes me to pump the brakes every single time I read that verse is unseen. Faith is confidence in what you cannot see. And that is the hardest thing in the world for a guy like me, a guy who wanted to see results, measure progress, and control outcomes.

I wanted to verify the transformation before I trusted the process.

I know people like that. Maybe you’re one of them. People who genuinely wanted change, wanted it desperately, but it never came. They wanted transformation, and it just never arrived. Never showed up at the door.

And that shows up in so many different areas of life, doesn’t it? Weight. Relationships. Spiritual growth. Trying to rebuild after a divorce. Climbing out of depression. Getting past something terrible that happened to you years ago. Grieving someone you loved and wondering if you’ll ever feel whole again.

But the one I want to sit with today, the one I really want to press into, is this idea of becoming a new creature. The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17:

“If anyone belongs to Christ, there is a new creation. The old things have gone; everything is made new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NCV)

I want to talk about a real transformation. The kind that everyone says they want, but few people actually find.

Now, if you’re not a spiritual person, if faith isn’t really your thing, please stay with me. I’m not going to try to frighten you into anything. I just want to be honest with you, because I think you deserve that.

Here is what I’ve come to believe after decades of living, failing, confessing, and watching people I love try to change and either find it or never quite get there. Real change, the deep, lasting, structural change in who you are, only happens when the Holy Spirit actually lives in you. And that only happens when you have fully surrendered.

Now I want you to sit with that word for a second. Surrendered.

Not just agreed with Jesus. Not just learned about Jesus. Not just shown up at church, read a few verses, or clicked on a blog post, though hey, keep doing that, but actually surrendered.

Surrendered your _________.

I left that blank on purpose. Because only you know what goes in it. Your anger. Your addiction. Your pride. Your need to control. Your need to be right. Your education, and sometimes, I’ll tell you, a high-level education can be the biggest barrier to humility a person ever faces. Your past. Your pain. Your reputation.

Whatever you are holding tightly with both hands and refusing to put down.

That’s your blank.

Jesus himself said it, and the more I read it, the more it causes me to evaluate myself. He said if you want to enter the Kingdom, you have to become like these. And he pointed to a child.

“I tell you the truth, you must change and become like little children. Otherwise, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3 NCV)

A child doesn’t negotiate. A child doesn’t bring credentials. A child doesn’t walk up to a parent and say, “I’ve thought about this carefully and I’ve concluded that I have some trust to offer you, but, contingent upon favorable outcomes.”

No. A child just falls. A child just reaches up and says, I need you. I can’t do this. Take me.

Here is the main theme I want you to really let sink in. I mean, let it sink in slowly, all the way down, until it settles somewhere deep:

You don’t learn your way into a new life. You surrender your way into one.

So let me ask you something personal. Have you completely confessed? Not the surface stuff. Not the polished version of your story that you’d share in a small group or write on a prayer request card. I mean all of it.

The addiction you haven’t told anyone about. The anger that still lives in the back of your throat. The bitterness toward the person who hurt you that you have quietly baptized as “justified.” The know-it-all posture you carry into every room. The sin that you are so ashamed of that you have convinced yourself God wouldn’t want you if He really knew.

Here’s the thing, and this might be the most important sentence in this entire post. If nothing has really changed in your life, it may not mean that God isn’t real. It may mean that you haven’t fully surrendered yet.

You’ve been learning about Jesus. But you haven’t fully met Him. There’s a difference, and it is the difference that changes everything.

I think about it like this. You can read every book ever written about a doctor. You can memorize their credentials, know their techniques, understand their philosophy of medicine. But if you never actually walk through the door and let them treat you, you will leave as sick as when you started. Knowledge without surrender is just more information. And most of us are not short on information. We’re short on surrender.

We’ve all heard it said that admitting the problem is fifty percent of the battle. And that’s true. But you have to really admit it. Not perform the admission, not say the words in the right place at the right time, but be so done, so worn out, so genuinely broken by whatever it is, that you stop fighting it and start confessing it.

That’s what rock bottom really is, by the way. Rock bottom is not just when everything has fallen apart. Rock bottom is the moment when you stop pretending you can fix it yourself.

Paul describes it in Romans 7: “I do not do the good things I want to do, but I do the bad things I do not want to do.” (Romans 7:19 NCV)

Does that feel familiar? It does to me. That’s the confession of a man who has run completely out of self-help. And it’s actually the beginning of transformation, not the end of hope.

Now I want to talk about something that doesn’t get enough airtime in these kinds of conversations. And it’s where a lot of you are living right now.

Some of you are struggling not just because you lack faith, though honestly, that’s part of it, but because you also struggle with consistency and discipline.

I’m talking about that thing you cannot shake. You know what I mean. You’ve prayed about it. You’ve confessed it. You’ve recommitted to changing it. And then, there it is again. Same sin. Same habit. Same pattern. Same version of you that you swore you were done with.

So what do you do?

You pray.

I know. That sounds like it’s not enough. It sounds too simple for something this heavy. But here’s what I want you to understand, you’re not just praying for willpower. You are asking the Holy Spirit to do something only He can do.

Ask Him to change your desires. Ask Him to take away your fears. Ask Him to give you strength you have never possessed on your own.

Because here’s what I’ve learned, you can grit your teeth and grind your way through almost anything for a while. But that kind of discipline will eventually run out of grip.

What you need is not more effort bolted onto the same old engine. You need a new engine entirely.

Paul writes in Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ, because he gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:13 NCV)

That is not a motivational statement. That is a man who was beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and starving, saying that the strength he was operating on was not his own. He had tapped into something supernatural. And that same resource is available to you.

But here’s where I have to be straight with you, because I think sometimes we use prayer as a substitute for hard work instead of the fuel for it.

You pray. And then you work. You trust. And then you try. You confess. And then you get up and go again.

Faith is having hope in an outcome you cannot see yet. But hope without action is just wishing. And you’ve been wishing long enough.

James says it plainly: “Faith that does nothing is dead.” (James 2:17 NCV)

Dead faith looks like someone who knows all the right answers but keeps living the same wrong life. Dead faith reads the diet book but never changes what’s on the plate. Dead faith walks into church on Sunday and hands the keys right back to the old self on Monday morning. Living faith prays and moves. It asks and acts. It confesses and gets back up.

Now I know, some of you were hoping I had something else. A shortcut. A different answer. A secret door. There isn’t one.

There is no version of this where you skip the surrender, skip the confession, skip the hard work, and still end up transformed. It doesn’t exist.

You have to pray. You have to trust. You have to ask. You have to confess. You have to find people who will hold you accountable, people who love you enough to tell you the truth and ask you the hard question next week and the week after that.

And you have to truly desire the transformation.

That last part is where I want to stay for just a moment. Until you are sufficiently disturbed, and I mean that in the best possible way, until whatever it is bothers you so deeply, costs you so completely, that you are genuinely done with it, you will probably not change. Not really. You’ll manage it. You’ll moderate it. You’ll apologize for it. But you won’t be free of it.

The moment of real transformation is the moment when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the fear of changing.

Solomon understood this. He wrote: “Trust the Lord with all your heart, and don’t depend on your own understanding. Remember the Lord in all you do, and he will give you success.” (Proverbs 3:5-6 NCV)

Not some of your heart. All of it. That’s the whole game right there.

So here’s where I want to land. Once you have surrendered, once you have confessed, really confessed, and you are asking the Spirit for the strength you don’t have, then you act. You possess what you profess. Through obedience, through showing up, through practicing what you now believe, you watch the change come.

And it will come. Not without pain, and I want to be honest with you about that.

People around you will still do wrong things. Disease will still show up. You will still die someday. You may even be mocked or dismissed by people who knew the old you and don’t know what to make of the new you.

But here is what will be different. There will be a peace that you cannot explain and did not manufacture. A calm in the middle of the storm. An assurance that something has genuinely changed, not because your circumstances got easier, but because you got different.

Let me give you a personal example. Sometimes the old Tim, and he still knocks on the door from time to time, says, “I am going to give them a piece of my mind.” I can feel it rising up. I know that feeling. I used to live in that feeling. But then they show up. And instead of a piece of my mind, I give them a piece of my heart. Love. Patience. Forgiveness. And I’m honestly surprised by myself when it happens.

Why? Because the old Tim didn’t do that. He couldn’t do that. The old Tim had to die before the new Tim could show up.

“Our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives.” (Romans 6:6 NCV)

That is what salvation actually looks like, lived out, in real time, on just a regular day, when someone says something that used to make your blood boil and instead you respond with grace. That’s the faith part. That’s the transformation.

And God will give you the strength you have never possessed on your own.

So I want to ask you one final question before we close. What part of your life have you not confessed? What are you still holding onto? What have you not yet admitted to God, or to Jesus, or to the Holy Spirit, or even to one trusted person who loves you enough to sit with you in it and pray?

Maybe you believe, but you haven’t fully surrendered. Maybe you’ve learned a lot, but you haven’t surrendered at all. Maybe you’ve been trying on your own strength, and you are exhausted.

Aren’t you tired? Aren’t you tired of carrying it? Aren’t you done fighting the “I want to be happy” battle, alone?

Happiness and peace are not the same thing. Happiness depends on happenings, on circumstances going your way. Peace is something altogether different. Peace lives underneath the chaos. Peace holds when happiness cannot.

I vote for peace. I vote for joy. I vote for the calm that comes from a surrendered life.

I vote for salvation and transformation.

GOD, if someone is reading this right now who doesn’t know You, who has been curious, or skeptical, or maybe just quietly desperate, would You send Your Spirit to them right now. Give them eyes to see and ears to hear. Not just to understand the information, but to feel the invitation.

And LORD, for the ones who have been trying, really trying, but keep falling back into the same place, the same habit, the same shame, would You meet them there. Not with judgment, but with grace. Would You change their desires from the inside out. Take away the fear that keeps them stuck. Give them a strength they have never possessed, the kind that only comes from You.

Help them trust, not just know, that Jesus came to save their soul. That He healed the broken, sat with the outcast, and died for the people who had run completely out of options. He died for my sins. He lived the perfect life I never could. And if I trust in that, not just know it, but trust it, You will forgive everything I’ve ever done and give me the new life I’ve been searching for.

Help me believe. Help me surrender. Help me do the hard work and trust You with the outcome I cannot yet see. For everyone finishing well today, may the peace that passes all understanding guard your heart and your mind.

IJNIP amen ♥️